Nigerians Strive To Assure Oil Majors On Tax Hikes

A series of articles in Nigerian daily newspapers in recent days have sought to reassure foreign oil investors that huge tax hikes proposed by the country's House of Representatives will not go forward before the Nigeria-Sao Tome and Principe Joint Development Zone blocks are awarded, and that they will not be a stringent as proposed in the 63 blocks now being offered by Nigeria alone.

While ERHC On The Move has reported for weeks on the proposed tax hikes, other publications who missed the first beat of the story, including Reuters, have now followed up and prominently reported the comments of both national petroleum advisor Dr. Edmund Daukoru and Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo suggesting that the House is, as they say, all wet.

Indeed, our stories have stirred responses from the multinationals themselves, who generally don't like to admit they read blogs.

They have banded together to present a united front in opposition to the tax hikes, and have also counter-attacked on charges that they were running a large number of illegal airstrips. We expect to hear soon that they deny en masse having evaded Nigerian taxes, a charge that has some states seeking hundreds of millions of dollars from majors.